"Yeah."
"The alpha was guarding the approach from above. The centipede controlled the underground passages. The mosquito swarms handled aerial defense. Every core I've ever studied maintains a final layer of defense in the chamber itself."
"Maybe we killed enough of its forces that it doesn't have anything left."
Blair looked at me. Her ice-blue eyes caught the golden light from the core and the blue light from the moss simultaneously, creating something that looked like dawn breaking over a frozen ocean. Dirt and blood streaked her face. Her red hair hung in tangles that would have given her personal stylist an aneurysm. The burns on her left side were visible through the tears in her tactical suit, red and angry and clearly painful with every breath she took.
She looked absolutely wrecked. She also looked like she was ready to fight God himself if God stood between her and the exit.
"Or it's a trap," she said.
"Probably."
"You want to walk into it anyway."
